The school where Kathleen Malu taught in Zaire
Kathleen Malu Zaire and Rwanda
K
athleen Malu, associate professor of secondary and middle school education, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire (1973-75) and Rwanda (1980-81). She had been interested in the Peace Corps since high school, influenced by a course in world history and by participation in Model United Nations. A semester abroad in France during college, where she majored in French and religion, cemented her desire to “go abroad and help other people.” Fluent in French, she was assigned to teach English as a foreign language at a girls high school in a Catholic mission in what is now Bas-Congo Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). Her accommodations at the mission included a two-bedroom house with a refrigerator and stove. After returning to the U.S. in 1975, she earned a master’s degree in the teaching of French and English as a second language, and then taught French at a high school in Washington, D.C. After several summers as a Peace Corps French language trainer for outgoing volunteers, she volunteered for a second Peace Corps assignment, this time to Rwanda, where she worked as an inspectrice and developed the English high school curriculum for the Rwandan Ministry of Education. Malu says her Peace Corps experiences have had a lasting influence, both personally and professionally. “I believe I have a broader, bigger view of people and of life,” she says. “I try to look at situations through multiple perspectives.” She remains connected to the Great Lakes Region of Africa, where she recently served as a Fulbright Scholar in Rwanda.
Volume 12, Number 1
Spring 2011
And her experiences inform her teaching at William Paterson. “I currently teach anthropology in education, and I will use photos from my time in Congo and Rwanda in my classes,” she says. “I help students look for similarities, not differences and we seek multiple perspectives as we work to interpret the photos.”
James Duffy ’88, M.A. ’96 Papua New Guinea
T
he village of Aitape, on the northwestern-most coast of Papua New Guinea, could only be reached by a small plane flying over the South Pacific nation’s rugged mountains. There, Jim Duffy ’88, M.A. ’96, and his wife, Julie, served as teachers in the local village school for fifteen months as Peace Corps volunteers. “For as long as I can remember, I was interested in the Peace Corps,” Duffy says. In 1996, and having recently completed his master’s degree in English at the University, “the time was ideal to pack up our
things and serve as volunteers.” Papua New Guinea, one of the world’s most culturally diverse and rural nations, had a great need for English language teachers. They were both assigned to the rural school, an hour’s walk from town, Jim to teach English, music, and science, and Julie to teach math and business skills. The school’s several hundred students, middle and high school-aged, lived on the school campus, along with the teachers and administrators. “While the students boarded at the school, it was completely different from our American notion of a boarding school,” Duffy says. “The terrain in Papua New Guinea is so rugged that the students couldn’t commute to their homes everyday. They cooked their own food and did chores across the campus.” The country had a strong focus on education, and the students were dedicated. “I learned how you can do more with less; sometimes students would share a pencil to take a test. They were so hungry to learn,” he recalls. In addition to teaching, Jim and Julie led an effort to create a library, soliciting books from publishers in Great Britain and the United States, as well as from their hometowns. Unfortunately, a long-simmering revolt escalated during Duffy’s time there, and they headed home early as the military presence in the capitol city grew unsettling. Not long after, the Peace Corps withdrew its presence from the country, and it has not returned. “It really gave me a true appreciation for cultural diversity,” says Duffy, who today is a senior director for corporate communications at ADP. “My early naïve observation was that the people would be simple, but there is an immensely sophisticated culture in place there. I would love to go back.”
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Jim and Julie Duffy at Aitape High School in Papua New Guinea